


Glimmer Goes Off on Catra

by CountDorku



Series: Swear-Ra [2]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Glimmer is just angrier, Out of Character, Rants, She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018) Season 5 Spoilers, Swearing, like not much, salt fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:13:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25005976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CountDorku/pseuds/CountDorku
Summary: In an alternate version of the season 5 episode "Taking Control", Glimmer tries the tough-love approach.Contains a lot of swearing.
Relationships: Adora & Catra (She-Ra), Adora & Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Glimmer (She-Ra)
Series: Swear-Ra [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810189
Comments: 6
Kudos: 39





	Glimmer Goes Off on Catra

“Did you think she’d instantly become a better person?” Glimmer asked mockingly, and Adora’s cheeks heated up.

“Uh, no…I thought fifteen minutes was more reasonable?”

Glimmer gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’ll go talk to her. You hold on.”

The door made a loud _clunk_ noise as it locked. Moving as surreptitiously as she could, Adora put her ear against it; she’d never been _that_ good with people, and maybe she could pick up some new insights-

“Hey, Catra, what the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

That certainly was a new one.

“Get off my back, Sparkles-”

“No, I don’t think I fucking will, Horde scum. Not least because your back is the problem. That chip in your neck is going to kill us all. I’m not a fan of it killing us all, so we’re gonna have to remove it. Greater good, needs of the many, all that good stuff, but the chip is coming off.”

“Fuck off. I’m not gonna let Entrapta monkey around with it-”

“Hey, maybe that wouldn’t be a problem if you hadn’t stabbed her in the back! Crazy how that works, huh. But look, she’s promised to be really focused, so now all you need to worry about is our ship getting blown up and all of us being dumped into hard vacuum. I’ve been in vacuum, Catra. It is not fun. It is the exact opposite of fun. I don’t think you’ll enjoy it much either.”

“I want to talk to Adora-”

“And I want to talk to my mom, but I can’t, because she’s dead! Because of you! So if I can be in the same room as you without trying to stab you with a chair leg, you can handle some minor surgery without needing an armed escort!”

“You don’t understand!”

“So _make me_ understand, Catra! Explain it in words that are not ‘I don’t like that my actions might have consequences’.”

Catra’s voice rose to a shout. “Adora hates me!”

“Maybe she should!”

Catra didn’t seem to have a response to that.

“Think about it, Catra! Think about how you’ve treated her for once in your fucking life! You’ve tried to kill her, what, four times now? Five? All because she had _literally anything_ in her life other than you? And that’s just her – what about Bow? You tried to kill him, too. What about _my mother_? You can’t just run around hurting people for months on end just to get back at someone and then be sad if she’s mad at you! And all because, what, she cared about innocent people _as well_ as you? She gave you _so fucking many_ chances to back down or move on or join up and you just doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on your pissant little tantrum over Adora having a life!”

“She made a _promise_ -”

“You don’t _own_ her, Catra! You never have! She is not a tool, she is not a weapon, and most importantly, she is not your mother, life coach, therapist or emotional crutch! She is a person with wants and needs and if she’s mad at you after you kept using that as an excuse to hurt her _then that sounds like a you problem_.”

“I…I’m sorry-”

“You’re sorry. Great, that’s a start. Is your sorry going to heal the scars off her back? Is it gonna make sure she never has another panic attack when something shorts out? ‘Cause she started having those after you tried to fry her on the power grid.”

“I…”

“Look, Catra.” Glimmer’s voice softened. “I think it’s honestly amazing that you’re trying to be a better person. So _try_. You’ve taken your first steps on the road. _But_ _Adora can’t carry you on her back the entire way_ – not least because of the scars. You’re gonna have to put on your big kid pants and actually put in the work yourself. Let me give you a hint: good people don’t hold the lives of everyone around them hostage just so they don’t get called out for acting like assholes!”

“No, apparently they just set off superweapons because they get mad!”

There was a moment of stark silence, and then Glimmer laughed. “So you _do_ still have some fight in you! That’s awesome. I was beginning to worry that Horde Prime had sucked it all out of you somehow and you were going to be this cringing spineless _waah-adowa-doesn’t-wike-me_ lump for the entire rest of the fight. But we’re not gonna _have_ an entire-rest-of-the-fight if Horde Prime kills us because you think getting Adora to overlook all the shit you’ve pulled is more important than Adora still being alive this time tomorrow! So are you going to lie there whining for the entire rest of the trip, which looks like it’s gonna be twenty minutes because we’re still getting shot at, or are you going to get the thing that’s gonna kill us all taken off your neck?”

There was the thud of a fist slamming into a bulkhead, and then Catra snarled, “Fine. I’ll get the chip taken off.”

“Congratulations! You’ve taken your first steps into a larger world, or at least a world that’s less likely to explode around us and kill us all.”

“Sparkles…” The anger was draining out of Catra’s voice. “Just out of interest…what would you have done if I’d said no?”

“I would’ve called in the anaesthetist.”

“You don’t have an anaesthetist.”

“First, _we_ don’t have an anaesthetist, you’re part of this crew too, and second, yes, we do. His name is Dr Bulkhead. Unfortunately, his technique is pretty blunt and you’d probably have a killer headache when you woke up.”

“So…you would have knocked me out.”

“Yeah, but I would’ve felt really bad about it afterwards. I would’ve been alive to feel bad about it, though.”

“I guess that’s fair. And Sparkles…I really am sorry. About everything.”

“I know.” Glimmer sounded surprisingly gentle. “But ‘I’m sorry’ isn’t a magic forgiveness button. You really want to be forgiven? Get your shit together and stop expecting Adora to do it for you.”

**Author's Note:**

> So I've already made it clear in various places that I thought S5 was, put charitably, a sequence of potentially good ideas executed badly because they didn't have time to do any of them well. So here's a little tweak, part of my very irregular X Goes Off On Y series, so that it feels a little less like everything Catra did over the entire run of the show prior to S5 has been spontaneously retconned out of history.
> 
> This was farted out in under an hour and I suspect it shows but w/e.


End file.
